In their afternoon of life, condemned tenements look emptily down a Charlestown hill
toward a commuter train hurrying people homeward from the city. Boston built the nation's
for years as the Italian-American Naturali
zation Club; like others of its kind, it was
created to care for immigrants.
The club has 13 charter members still
alive, all in their eighties. I met one, Amadeo
Fortulati, leaning on a white cane along
Endicott Street.
"Once," he said in a firm voice, "you had
to be a Monty, a man from Montefalcione, to
get into the club. Now," he extended his hand,
palm open, "we have an Irishman!"
For 43 years, the statue of St. Anthony
lived with shoemaker John Piccone and his
362
family. Year in and out the men carried the
statue out into the streets, and brought it
back home to the shoemaker's house. And
the saint gave them the blessing they sought
the security of a united people, an identity
in a hard industrial world, a reminder of
who they really were.
In those days they often lived two families
to a room, and they went out from the North
End by way of old Haymarket Square, into a
world of roistering Irish and severe Yankees.
"There wasn't no place to go," said Mr.
Piccone.
National Geographic, September 1974